Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
It’s Not All about Genes: DIY
I really thought at my age I would know how to do more things.
My parents could do anything. My dad built a house, starting with getting a team of horses and some kind of shovel thing to dig out a basement. That is no lie. There were actual horses involved! The house was a five-bedroom, two-story Cape Cod-looking house with a breezeway and an attached garage built in Hastings, Michigan in about 1950 or so.
My mother could turn a little girl’s dress into curtains for a basement window and vice versa. Once I told her, the night before the dress rehearsal, that I was in a play at school that required that I have a Pilgrim costume. She created a pattern out of newspaper, found gray cloth somewhere (from the sail of a nearby ship?) and created a Pilgrim costume complete with a dainty white collar and cuffs on the sleeves.
My biggest DIY project was painting the office where I am writing this blog post. I am an enthusiastic painter but very sloppy. I get paint on my hands and my shoes and then track paint across the rug. I tape everything so as not to besmirch the trim, but I leave little marks, like sparrow footprints in the snow.
Nonetheless, I love painting. It signifies taking matters into your own hands. It’s probably how my parents felt with their house building and Pilgrim costume-making. Not absolutely comparable, but you get the idea.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
My parents could do a lot of stuff too, my mother especially. She sewed, hooked rugs, had a potters wheel and kiln, oil paints – and was remarkably good with numbers. She knitted, crocheted and could turn any item of clothing into something else. I think she never understood how she could have a daughter who couldn’t sew or knit. At least I could draw.
I used to love painting but then a million years ago I took on our newish house room by room. It messed up my neck so much that I physically can’t do it anymore. Now I just hoe in the 2 small garden beds that border my front door and pound a few nails every so often…and I can still put together IKEA furniture like a pro 🙂
Jan, I’m blessed with a man (hubby of 48 years) who at the scent of my starting a DIY project, will jump over me and DO IT for me. His intentions are honorable but it’s really annoying. Dee Tezelli, author of 24+eBooks/Paperbacks on Amazon Kindle.
I think you’re pretty lucky. My husband – who is wonderful in a thousand ways – looks the other way when DIY projects present themselves. Oh well, we can’t have everything, right?